The Regret INFJs Are Most at Risk For – And How to Avoid It

When people reach the end of their lives, their regrets tend to sound eerily familiar. Not “I wish I’d bought a nicer car.” Not “I should have stayed later at work.” It’s deeper than that. It’s about authenticity, courage, connection.

Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, spent years sitting beside people in their final days, listening. Eventually, she documented what she heard most often in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The patterns were painfully clear: most regrets had very little to do with achievement — and everything to do with how people lived in relation to their own truth.

As a certified MBTI practitioner who has worked with hundreds of INFJs, I see those same risks playing out long before anyone reaches a deathbed. Personality type shapes where we tend to lose ourselves. And for INFJs, there’s one regret that comes up again and again:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” (Bronnie Ware)

This is not theoretical for INFJs — it’s a pattern I’ve seen again and again in my clients, my readers, and in myself (although I’m an INTJ). INFJs adapt. They read the room. They make others comfortable. And in doing so, they often slip into a life that looks peaceful on the outside, but gnaws quietly from within.

This article is about that specific regret. Why it happens. How it creeps up. And most importantly — how to avoid it.

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Estimated reading time: 11 minutes

The INFJ’s Natural Tendency Toward Adaptation

INFJs are specialists in seeing what isn’t being said. You watch people like some people watch weather patterns. The hesitation behind a smile. The sigh between sentences. The need sitting behind the words “I’m fine.” You feel it. You’ve always felt it.

And long before you had any kind of label for it — long before you heard the letters I-N-F-J — you probably learned that reading people kept the peace. You could sense tension rising in a conversation, and with a few carefully chosen words or a tiny emotional adjustment, you could dissipate it. You became a master of harmony without even realizing it.

It’s a gift. But it’s also the trap.

Because the more you adapt to what others need, the less you stay anchored to your own.

As Ware puts it:

“To be in any sort of relationship where you do not express yourself, simply to keep the peace, is a relationship ruled by one person and will never be balanced or healthy.”

The INFJ learns early that being “easy” earns love. Being flexible feels safe. The danger is subtle — you slowly become the emotional custodian of everyone else’s comfort, while quietly displacing your own needs and dreams.

Not because you don’t have them. INFJs have some of the richest inner worlds imaginable — vivid, complex, often startling visions of what life could be. But those dreams tend to get postponed, pushed down, made “practical.” After all, there are people depending on you. There’s no immediate crisis. You’re fine.

Until you aren’t.

The Core Regret: Not Living True to Yourself

In The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, Ware shares the most common regret she heard from those at the end of life:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

This is where INFJs quietly bleed.

The INFJ’s natural instinct to tune into others — driven by Introverted Intuition (Ni) scanning for meaning, and Extraverted Feeling (Fe) scanning for harmony — can turn into a life lived entirely for other people’s comfort. You become what’s needed. What’s safe. What won’t rock the boat.

Careers are chosen because they’re stable, respectable, or what someone else imagined for you. Relationships are maintained because they seem fine, even if they quietly starve you. Dreams are shelved for “later,” which rarely comes.

You end up living in what I call the emotional backseat of your own life — close enough to see the road, but never taking the wheel.

And by the time the ache surfaces, it feels too late to start driving.

The Slow Burn of INFJ Regret

INFJs usually don’t crash into regret like a sudden accident. It’s slower than that. It’s the quiet “someday” that stays on repeat. The life you’ll start “when things settle down.” The novel you’ll write when the kids are grown. The truth you’ll speak when it’s finally “the right time.”

But as Ware says:

“We spend so much time making plans for the future, often depending on things happening at a later date to assure our happiness or assuming we have all the time in the world, when all we ever have is our life today.”

And that’s how it happens.

You wake up one day and realize decades have passed. You’ve been dutiful, adaptable, kind. You’ve helped others shine. But you never fully stepped into your own light. You were always waiting for the right time. You were always managing other people’s emotions. You were always smoothing the edges. And now, you’re standing in the middle of your life wondering when you stopped living it for yourself.

It’s not dramatic. It’s haunting.

And it’s preventable.

What Holds INFJs Back

Most INFJs don’t intend to live for other people’s expectations. It happens slowly, through small, seemingly harmless compromises. The desire for harmony, combined with empathy, perfectionism, and a heavy dose of internal responsibility, makes it dangerously easy to sacrifice yourself piece by piece — all while convincing yourself you’re being “practical.”

I’ve seen it again and again in my INFJ clients.

The Fear of Disappointing Others

One client, Rachel, came to me in her mid-40s. She’d stayed in a corporate job for 20 years because it made her parents proud. She told me, “I don’t even hate my job. I just… never loved it. I kept thinking maybe the satisfaction would kick in once I got promoted enough. But now I’m realizing I was never really satisfied here.”

INFJs often measure their choices against how many people will be hurt or disappointed if they change course. The fear of creating ripples—of breaking someone else’s vision of who you’re supposed to be—can feel more dangerous than the slow erosion of your own joy.

The Myth of Noble Self-Sacrifice

Another client, Lauren, stayed in a marriage that drained her emotionally. “It wasn’t abusive,” she said. “Just suffocating. But I kept thinking: other people have it worse. I should be grateful. I didn’t want to seem selfish.”

This is common for INFJs — the tendency to spiritualize suffering. To believe that enduring discomfort without complaint is somehow the right thing to do. That being “low-maintenance” is a virtue.

The Paralysis of Perfectionism

And then there’s perfectionism — the INFJ’s shadow twin.

Eli, a gifted INFJ writer, spent years outlining his novel. Revising drafts. Rethinking characters. “I keep waiting until I have the perfect opening sentence,” he told me. “Like once I get that part right, the rest will fall into place.”

Perfectionism disguises itself as virtue. But it’s fear wearing a nice suit.

Brené Brown writes:

“Perfectionism is a 20-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us, when in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from being seen.”

For INFJs, perfectionism becomes a way to indefinitely delay vulnerability. You can’t be criticized for the work you never share. You can’t fail at the dream you never fully commit to.

The Need to Control Outcomes

Underneath all of this sits the INFJ’s deep craving for control—not in the domineering sense, but in the desperate hope that if you just manage everything carefully enough, you can protect everyone, avoid pain, and guarantee the best possible outcome.

But as Ware says bluntly:

“Trying to control the timing and outcome was a terrible waste of energy. My intentions were already out there and I had taken what action I could. My only job now was to get out of the way.”

The brutal truth: control is an illusion. And the longer you cling to it, the longer you postpone the life you’re meant to live.

The Path Forward: How INFJs Can Live Without Regret

The good news is that you don’t have to wait until your final days to face this regret. You’re reading this now, which means you still have time. Ware writes:

“Life is over so quickly. It is possible to reach the end with no regrets. It takes some bravery to live it right, to honour the life you are here to live but the choice is yours.”

The INFJ path forward isn’t about becoming reckless or selfish. It’s about reclaiming your own seat at the table. It’s about having the courage to live with your empathy, not underneath it.

Let’s break it down.

Radical Honesty With Yourself

This is where it begins. Before you can live authentically, you have to get brutally honest about where you’ve been quietly sacrificing your own dreams.

Ask yourself:

• Whose expectations am I still carrying?
• What am I postponing because it feels “too disruptive”?
• What am I afraid might happen if I fully show up as myself?

This isn’t a one-time exercise. It’s ongoing. INFJs are masters at rationalizing their self-sacrifice as “wisdom.” You need to actively dismantle that story.

Ware saw this again and again:

“Finding the courage to act or surrender will never be as painful as lying on a deathbed with regrets.”

Speak Even When It’s Uncomfortable

INFJs often choose silence to preserve peace. But silence can quietly destroy you.

Ware tells the story of Jozsef — a man who spent most of his life working, holding his family at arm’s length, never expressing his real feelings. At the end, he was haunted by the relationships he never fully built because his heart had always been locked behind a wall.

“Seeing the anguish Jozsef experienced from not being able to express his feelings left me determined to always try and be brave enough to share mine.”

INFJs need to practice saying the hard thing. Not to create conflict, but to create connection. True belonging, as Brené Brown puts it, only happens when you’re fully seen — not when you’re perfectly agreeable.

Choose Environments That Nourish You

Ware writes about how environment shapes us more than we realize. Your surroundings — where you live, who you spend time with, what kind of work you do — are either growing you or eroding you.

INFJs tend to absorb the emotional atmosphere of whatever space they inhabit. Choose those spaces carefully. Create room in your life for people who see you fully. Work that aligns with your vision. Stillness where your intuition can breathe.

If your environment suffocates your growth, change it. Even if that feels terrifying. As one of Ware’s clients told her:

“Sometimes you have to take some steps back to get a run-up before you jump.”

Surrender the Illusion of Control

INFJs crave control because it feels safe. If you anticipate every possibility, maybe you can protect everyone from pain—including yourself.

As Epictetus once famously said:

“Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle: some things are within our control, and some things are not.”

You won’t be able to control how people respond when you speak your truth. You won’t be able to guarantee that every dream unfolds exactly as planned. But you can take the step that’s in front of you. That’s where freedom lives

Prioritize Joy and Balance Now — Not Later

INFJs often defer happiness to some hypothetical future — when the timing’s better, when everyone else is settled, when life finally calms down.

It rarely does.

Ware writes:

“Gratitude for every day along the way is the key to acknowledging and enjoying happiness now. Not when the results come in or when you retire, or when this or that happens.”

Happiness is not selfish. Joy nourishes your ability to serve others from a full place instead of an empty one. INFJs need to remember that their dreams aren’t indulgent distractions — they’re part of what keeps them emotionally alive.

The Final Thought: Be Who You Are

At the end of her book, Bronnie Ware writes something painfully simple:

“Be who you are, find balance, speak honestly, value those you love, and allow yourself to be happy.”

For INFJs, that may sound deceptively small. You’ve spent so much of your life calculating the emotional math for everyone else that you’ve forgotten how radical it actually is to choose yourself.

INFJs are not naturally reckless. You’re not driven by impulse. Your caution comes from love. But that same caution, left unchecked, becomes a quiet erasure. You slip into roles that feel comfortable to everyone except you. You live for harmony and end up silencing your own music.

That’s not what you’re here for.

You’re here to bring your vision into the world. To write the book. To say the hard thing. To create art that stirs people. To pursue the life that’s calling you, even if it disrupts someone else’s comfort for a moment.

Ware saw it over and over:

“We can never know the gifts that will flow to us until they arrive, but of one thing I am certain. Courage and honesty are always rewarded.”

Courage doesn’t mean abandoning your empathy. It means extending your empathy to yourself.

So if you want to avoid the regret that haunts so many INFJs at the end — start now. Name the dream. Take the step. Speak the truth. Not someday. Not when it’s safe. Now.

The only thing scarier than risking your truth is realizing you never did.

Sources:

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Bronnie Ware (Hay House Inc, March 2012)

The MBTI® Manual: A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Instrument Third Edition by Isabel Briggs Myers, Mary H. McCaulley, Naomi L. Quenk, and Allen L. Hammer (CPP, Inc. 2009)

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